In the industrial engineering arts, a common task is the dispensing of liquid, gel, or otherwise fluid products into individual packages for distribution and sale.
In particular, in the food and beverage arts, apparatuses for filling containers such as bottles, jars, and the like are well known, for instance as a part of a larger continuous production and packaging operation.
Generally speaking, such container-filling apparatuses comprise a nozzle with a mouth adapted to cooperate with a container, and permit the fluid product to be conducted from a source such as a production line or reservoir in order to be dispensed through the nozzle into the container.
In addition to simple installations where the container is filled with a single homogeneous product, it is well known to produce fluid products by means of adding a volume of an additive fluid to a base fluid in a predetermined proportion.
By adding one or more additives to a base, a single production line may be employed to produce a large variety of different product variations. For instance, a line for bottling sodas can produce a variety of different beverages by altering the type and volume of syrup that is mixed with the carbonated water.
These additives are dispensed into the containers by a separate dosing machine, which is configured to dispense a quantity of the additive into the container. This may be performed either immediately prior to or after the container is filled with the base fluid. Such additive-dosing machines are generally configured to provide a precise amount of the additive, so as to maintain tight control over the proportion of additive to base.
The base-additive product packaging systems known in the art, despite their versatility, are disadvantageous in that a great deal of floor space is required to provide such capacity in a container filling production line. This increased space obligation may limit the capacity that may be achieved in a new-installation production line, relative to one without an additive-dispensing system.
Moreover, adapting existing production lines may not be feasible, as each additive-dispensing apparatus added to the production line requires a commitment of floor space that may render adapting an existing operation infeasible.
It is therefore desirable to provide a means for dispensing additives into product containers that resolves at least some of the problems enumerated above.